


Right Now

by toyhto



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Dreams, Happens after Twin Peaks: The Return, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Twin Peaks Season/Series 03 Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-03 22:03:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12757047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: "This is a dream."





	Right Now

**Author's Note:**

> So, I watched Twin Peaks: The Return, and there was something it was seriously missing, namely Sheriff Harry S. Truman. Here we go.

_What year is this?  
  
What year is this?  
  
What year is this?  
  
_ He closed his eyes but his own voice kept ringing in his head. _What year is this?_ And Laura Palmer was standing beside him, he was _certain_ it was Laura, because somehow it all came back to Laura, over and over again. He glanced at the house once again and then Laura stopped screaming. He turned to her, but she was gone and Harry Truman was standing there, with his hat and his coat, looking exactly like he had in 1989.  
  
“Coop?” Harry asked.  
  
“Harry?” he asked. Something was wrong. But he couldn’t see Laura anywhere, and all the houses on the streets turned off their lights one by one, and Harry was looking at him.  
  
“Let’s go,” Harry said, “I parked the car down the road.”  
  
“I can’t go with you,” he said even though something twisted inside of him when he said it. “I’m not supposed to. I’m trying to fix this.”  
  
“Fix what?” Harry said and started walking.  
  
“I’m going to solve Laura Palmer’s murder, Harry,” he said and followed Harry even though he shouldn’t have. “She’s alive. I’m sure she’s alive. In this version of what happened. I just have to find her and take her home and everything will be –“  
  
“Coop,” Harry said in a somewhat gentle voice, “you know that you can’t change what happened, don’t you?”  
  
“But I saw her. She was alive.”  
  
“This is a dream.”  
  
“No, it’s not,” he said. He couldn’t see where they were walking to. There was mist everywhere and he didn’t know where it had come from. Harry was still walking as if they were going somewhere, so he followed Harry. Thank God Harry had found him. He had thought Harry was –, “Harry,” he said, “you’re old. And you’re sick. I went to the station. Your brother told me.”  
  
“Here’s my car,” Harry said.  
  
They got into the car. Harry gave him a donut and he took it, and then he noticed that his own hands had got younger .The wrinkles were gone.  
  
“Harry,” he said, “what year is this?”  
  
“1989.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“What’re we doing?”  
  
“We’re waiting for Donna Hayward,” Harry says. “I think this is your first night at Twin Peaks. Or one of the firsts. I don’t even know you yet, not really. You’re a bit strange but also very nice and polite and you like donuts.”  
  
“Thank you,” he said and blinked. They were still sitting in the car but now the car was parked in the shadows outside the Roadhouse. He remembered this night, only it had happened a long time ago. “Where’s Donna?”  
  
“Not here,” Harry said and took another donut. “She moved away from the town for college and never came back. The whole family moved away. I heard she visits Audrey Horne sometimes.”  
  
“What happened to Audrey?”  
  
“No one knows,” Harry said. “She’s in a private hospital in Portland. A nice place. Sometimes she answers when people talk to her and sometimes she doesn’t. There was an explosion at the bank, right after you went to the Black Lodge.”  
  
“You knew I was in the Black Lodge?”  
  
“No,” Harry said and started the car, “but I missed you like hell, Coop. I knew something was wrong. And I missed you.”  
  
“I knew you would,” he said and felt unbearably sad.  
  
“Come on,” Harry said and turned the car to the road. “It’s late.”  
  
“Where’re we going?”  
  
“To the hotel.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“You tell me.”  
  
“Harry,” he said, “I don’t think you’re actually here.”  
  
Harry glanced at him but didn’t say anything. He ate the rest of the donut and then sat in silence when Harry drove him to the hotel and parked the car oddly carelessly, which turned out to be justified because the car vanished the second they stepped out of it. He walked next to Harry to the hotel which seemed to be just like it had been 1989. It smelled the same. He didn’t bother asking Harry where they were going, because he kind of had a feeling, and also he had the key.  
  
When he opened the door to his room, he wondered if it was actually there or if they ended up somewhere else again. The room was there. He walked in and Harry followed him and closed the door, and everything was in the right place, including his spare suit. He wondered if it still fit, and then he walked past the mirror and realized he looked young and pretty damn good.  
  
“I look good,” he said to Harry.  
  
Harry didn’t look surprised.  
  
“What’re we doing here, Harry?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “It’s your dream. Where do you want me?”  
  
He swallowed and sat down in the bed that felt like a real bed. He placed his hand on it and patted it. He took the pillow and turned it around but it didn’t vanish. And for the whole time Harry was just looking at him as if whatever odd he might do, Harry would bear with him. Maybe it had been like that.  
  
“What kind of a dream?” he asked then. “Are you real?”  
  
“No,” Harry said, “yeah. You aren’t real either.”  
  
“I just tried to save Laura Palmer.”  
  
“You can’t. She’s gone.”  
  
“But you’re here.”  
  
“Coop,” Harry said, ”I just met you. You’re strange but I like you. I like you very much. I’ll like you even more. And when Josie dies, I’ll think that nothing is going to hurt that much. But then I lose you, too. And it’s different but just as bad.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“It wasn’t your fault, and it hadn’t happened yet. Coop, I think your heart is beating.”  
  
“What?” he said and placed his palm on his chest.  
  
“And your skin is warm,” Harry said, “and you breathe. Like you were actually here. And I’m the same.”  
  
“Give me your hand,” he said and Harry walked to him and let him grab his wrist and press his thumb on it. “You have a pulse, Harry.”  
  
“Of course I have a pulse.”  
  
“I can’t just –,” he said and held Harry’s hand.  
  
“Can’t what? I thought you could do pretty much anything. And you did. You did impossible things. I just followed you around.”  
  
“No,” he said, “no. Harry, this is a dream. I’m not thinking straight. I should try to fix this.”  
  
“Coop;” Harry said, “I’m here now. You lost Laura Palmer but you haven’t lost me, not yet.”  
  
_Not yet,_ he thought and held Harry’s hand in between his own. He shouldn’t stop now. He shouldn’t stay sitting on his bed at the Great Northern Hotel in 1989 when somewhere, someday, something was happening that he should’ve been part of. But he was tired, and he remember vaguely holding Laura Palmer’s hand in the woods and, much, much later, having his own hand held by Janey-E Jones. Possibly there had been others. And Annie. _Annie._ Annie Blackburn whom he’d lost in the Black Lodge and whose face he couldn’t remember, perhaps because he hadn’t met her yet.  
  
“Where’s Annie?”  
  
“Nothing’s happened yet,” Harry said. “We’re here at the beginning.”  
  
“But not really.”  
  
“Not really. Coop, when we were sitting in the car outside the Roadhouse, waiting for Donna Hayward… If I had kissed you, would you have kissed me back?”  
  
He felt cold and as if he had missed something. “Did you think about kissing me?”  
  
“No,” Harry said, “but I would now. I missed you like hell. Would you have kissed me back?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“What about now?” Harry asked and took a step closer.  
  
“Harry,” he said, “I don’t know if this is a good idea. We can’t have sex in a dream.”  
  
“Who said anything about sex?”  
  
He swallowed. Harry smiled at him in a way he remembered through the dim memory of the last twenty-five years. “Sorry.”  
  
“Don’t be sorry,” Harry said. “Stand up, Coop.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Stand up.”  
  
He did even though everything in him felt heavy. Harry grabbed his shoulders and looked at him carefully as if trying to remember everything. He stood still. And then Harry opened the top button of his shirt and Harry’s fingers brushed his skin.  
  
“What’re you doing?”  
  
“Shhh,” Harry said, ”don’t speak. You can kiss me now, Coop.”  
  
“I can’t kiss you.”  
  
“Yeah, you can.”  
  
He shook his head and then stood up on his toes and kissed Harry. Harry kissed him back. He didn’t know if it felt like a real kiss, because he’d forgotten what kisses felt like. But it had to be close.  
  
He kept thinking that he couldn’t have a sex dream about Harry Truman. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. But clearly he could. Harry undressed him and then lay him on the bed and he let it happen, because clearly Harry knew what he was doing, at least in a dream. He was certain that if they had done this in real life, Harry wouldn’t have had an idea what to do. Both of them would have been clumsy and awkward about it and Harry probably wouldn’t have dared to unbutton his shirt like he did now, and he wouldn’t have dared to tell Harry to, and their kisses would have been full of colliding teeth and taking breaths in inconvenient moments. Actually it was a bit odd that he had never considered kissing Sheriff Truman. But now Sheriff Truman was kissing him, and he closed his eyes but only for a second, because he was afraid that he might wake up.  
  
He didn’t. The light in the room wavered. Harry parted his knees and sat down in between them. A little later he thought _this isn’t happening_ but Harry already had one hand on his waist and the other on his face, and he tried to keep his feet on the mattress but didn’t quite make it. Everything went vague but in a good way. He listened to Harry’s breaths and his own and thought that this was surprisingly easy, but then again, they were in a dream. And Harry stopped moving for a moment and wrapped his fingers around him and stroked, and he closed his eyes.  
  
He woke up with headache. The room was full of dust. Harry was gone. The light that came from the window was grey. He wiped his stomach clean and thought that clearly closing his eyes had been a mistake. Then he went to the bathroom but the mirror was broken, so he couldn’t confirm that he was again twenty-five years older. Also, his right knee hurt a little.  
  
_It was just a dream,_ he thought, _a sex dream. Nothing more. You’ve had those before. Probably._ But his hands still smelled of Harry.  
  
He opened the door and realized he was in the empty corridor. He followed it until he got out. The day was grey as he had figured, and it looked like 2014. But he had to check. He took his cell phone, what a nice and convenient innovation, and called Sheriff Truman.  
  
“Sheriff Truman.”  
  
“Frank,” he said, “it’s Dale Cooper. What year is this?”  
  
“Is something wrong?” Frank Truman asked in a voice that didn’t sound surprised at all.  
  
“No,” he said, “I don’t think so. Possibly I just don’t know it yet. Listen, can you tell me where I can find Harry?”  
  
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Frank Truman said very slowly. “He’s quite tired these days. He’s not well.”  
  
“Please.”  
  
Frank Truman gave him Harry’s address. He memorized it and then put the cell phone into his pocket. Then he went back to the hotel and asked the receptionist where he could rent a car.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“What year is this?”  
  
The girl behind the counter blinked at him. “2014, sir.”  
  
“Thank you,” he said and glanced through the window. “So, the car is…”  
  
“I’ll show it to you.”  
  
He drove for twenty minutes and then he stopped the car at the side of the road and spend a few minutes watching the scene and taking deep breaths. Twin Peaks looked different, but probably that was because his memories were fading into black and white. He thought the trees were greener now and the sky was brighter and the mountains were higher. He rubbed his hands together and then stared at them for a while. He had an old man’s hands. And then he remembered he was an old man.  
  
The road had so many curves that for a few times he thought he had got lost. And when he had almost convinced himself that he was in a dream and he should turn and drive back to the town and try to find Laura Palmer who thought she was Carrie Page so that he could fix this, then the road did another turn and there was a small cabin on the side of the mountain. He parked the car in front of the cabin and thought he saw the curtains moving. This looked exactly like the kind of a place where Sheriff Harry S. Truman would go to hide.  
  
He knocked on the door. Someone said something but he couldn’t make sense of the words, and then, after an awfully long silence, he heard footsteps. He pulled his shoulders back and then the door opened.  
  
“Coop,” Harry said and stared at him.  
  
He opened his mouth. “Hello.”  
  
“Frank called me and said that you might come,” Harry said. Harry’s eyes were the same. “Come in.”  
  
He stepped over the threshold and held his breath, but the place where the door led was certainly Harry’s cabin. Harry looked at him as if wondering what the hell he was doing but didn’t ask. He closed the door behind him but the bright sunlight still came from the windows. The room was small and it had dark wooden walls, and Harry had dark circles under his eyes and hands that looked way older than his.  
  
“Harry,” he said, and Harry glanced at him and then sat down in the chair beside the kitchen counter.  
  
“Sorry,” Harry said, “I can’t –“  
  
“It’s alright,” he said even though it clearly wasn’t. “Harry, I’m sorry –“  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Harry said. “Take a chair and sit down.”  
  
The chair creaked. He tried to stay still, but Harry was watching him and he had an odd feeling, like perhaps he hadn’t yet realized that he had really been away for twenty-five years. He had been so busy trying to save Laura Palmer, and now he had lost Laura again. Maybe this was the time when he was supposed to figure out what was left of his life. He felt oddly bitter.  
  
“So,” Harry said in a somewhat hoarse voice, “Agent Cooper.”  
  
“Harry, you could just call me Dale.”  
  
“Dale,” Harry said slowly. “You came back.”  
  
He nodded. Harry frowned at him and rubbed his hands together. Harry’s wrists looked impossibly thin.  
  
“Back from where?”  
  
“The Black Lodge,” he said. “I thought you knew. I was there for twenty-five years. The night of the Miss Twin Peaks contest, surely you remember, I went there but didn’t come back. It was –“  
  
“You seemed different,” Harry said. “I was worried. I thought that place had changed you. But you left so quickly that I didn’t have time to… to figure out that it wasn’t you.”  
  
“But I’m here now. It’s really me this time.”  
  
“I know. I can see it.”  
  
“You can?”  
  
“I had some dreams over the years,” Harry said and took a deep breath. “Things that we did together, you know, when you were here. And things we never did. You always felt real in those.”  
  
“Harry,” he said and leaned forward. The chair creaked. Harry flinched.  
  
“I felt that I still knew you somehow,” Harry said and then cleared his throat. “Would you like to… something? Water? I might have chocolate. Frank comes every other day but I’m out of the donuts at the moment. And I don’t really drink coffee anymore.”  
  
“It’s fine,” he said, “I don’t need anything. Just… Harry, I thought I was supposed to solve the case.”  
  
“What case?”  
  
“Laura Palmer’s murder. I thought that was why I came back. And I thought I knew what to do. But it didn’t go well. I lost her again.”  
  
“Coop,” Harry said in a quiet voice, “you can’t save Laura Palmer. She died twenty-five years ago.”  
  
“I don’t think it’s so simple.”  
  
“What? You don't think she’s really dead?”  
  
“No,” he said, “I’m sure she is, only I went through this… I don’t know what. I don’t know if it happened really or in a dream, but I went through and everything changed and I found her, only she looked about twenty-five years older than she was when she died, and she thought her name was Carrie Page. I took her with me to Twin Peaks. But someone else was living in the Palmer house.”  
  
“Coop,” Harry said and shook his head.  
  
“No, I’m serious. This actually happened.”  
  
“I always thought that maybe you were a bit mad,” Harry said, and there was a hint of a smile lingering on his mouth, “or maybe you just knew something no one else did. But, Coop, Laura is dead.”  
  
“But I –“  
  
“We grow old,” Harry said, watching him, “if we’re lucky. And then we die. We can’t bring back the dead, except maybe in dreams.”  
  
“I had a dream about you last night,” he said, because there was something dark in Harry’s eyes and he didn’t want to talk about getting old and dying.  
  
Harry swallowed. “Last night?”  
  
“Yes. We were young.”  
  
“Coop,” Harry said slowly, “I also had a dream about you last night. We were young.”  
  
“We were in a hotel room, at the Great Northern Hotel,” he said, just to try it, and Harry looked a bit shaken.  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yes. Do you mind if I tell you?”  
  
Harry shook his head.  
  
“We had sex,” he said and wondered if this was a good idea, but also he couldn’t make himself stop talking. “We talked about kissing. You asked me about the night when we were trying to follow Donna Hayward and we were sitting in your car outside the Roadhouse. You asked me if I had kissed you back. I don’t know, Harry. But then you told me to stand up and I did and you told me to kiss you. And I did. And the rest of it…you seemed to know what to do. You undressed me. And, you know, I was lying on the bed on my back, and you were… you did…”  
  
“I fucked you,” Harry said very quietly.  
  
“Yes,” he said and then blinked. “You what?”  
  
“In the dream,” Harry said and swallowed visibly, “in the dream I had last night. I… we had sex in your old hotel room. I don’t know how it began. And I don’t know how it ended. I think I fell asleep in the dream and then woke up for real. But…”  
  
“You -,” he said but couldn’t quite finish that. “You…. was that the first time?”  
  
“No,” Harry said. “I’ve had a few. Over the years.”  
  
“About me.”  
  
“I'm sorry,” Harry said, “I know it’s weird. At first it was… I had some kind of a crisis about that. But then I thought… I missed you like hell, Coop. I missed you. So it somehow made sense that I kept having dreams about you, even if they were pretty… intense.”  
  
“Oh,” he said. “ _Oh._ Harry, I wish I’d have been around. Around here. And… in the dreams.”  
  
Harry blinked.  
  
“Don’t say you’re sorry. I wanted that too,” he said, “you know, in the dream.”  
  
Harry was watching him as if trying to see through him. “But you don’t… you aren’t… you wouldn’t…”  
  
“I think I’m going to stay here for a while,” he said, “if you let me, of course. I kind of feel that Laura Palmer was supposed to be my last case.”  
  
“Coop,” Harry said, “you don’t need to do that. Not for me at least.”  
  
“Or I could help Albert and Cole out once in a while. But I don’t really want to live in the city anymore. I had this idea that I’d buy a house in Twin Peaks. Maybe I will.”  
  
“You can stay in my cabin,” Harry said, “but Coop, you aren’t dying yet. You don’t even look _old._ You should live your life.”  
  
“I am,” he said and took a deep breath, “I am living my live, Harry. Right now. I’ll drive to the town later, to get some donuts. And coffee. I’m going to need coffee. Absolutely. Do you think we can both fit in that bed?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “And I have to warn you. I learned in the hospital that I snore.”  
  
“I should buy earplugs then,” he said. “Harry, about that dream.”  
  
Harry shifted in his chair. “What?”  
  
“If I come over there, would you kiss me back?”  
  
Harry blinked. “I don’t know.”  
  
“I realize that the sex thing isn’t going to happen. Not right away, at least. Maybe when you’ve got better.”  
  
“Coop,” Harry said, “I’m not going to get better.”  
  
“Well, then,” he said and glanced through the window. He could see the peaks of the mountains and the blue sky and there were birds singing in the distance and the air smelled of spruces, even inside the cabin. “Then I’d like to try to kiss you right now. If you let me.”  
  
“Of course I’ll let you,” Harry said in a tired voice. “But I don’t think I can stand up for it. And it’s not going to be the same than in the dream. I get breathless pretty easily these days.”  
  
“Don’t worry,” he said, “this is better than the dream. I’ll stand up now. And then I’ll walk to you and kiss you and later I’ll drive to the town and get those donuts. I think we’re going to be happy, Harry.”  
  
And they were.


End file.
